Orange
24th Annual Old Towne Orange Car Show – Sunday April 15, 2018 0
It’s almost that time of year again! Time for the Orange Plaza Sunrise Rotary to host it’s 24th Annual Car Show! Money raised from this highly anticipated event will help fund community outreach programs, youth education, and literacy programs.
Nearly 400 pre-1976 Street Rods, Custom and Classic vehicles will be on display. The show is estimated to bring out 15,000+ spectators to the beautiful Plaza area in the City of Orange. It is a wonderful event for the entire family to enjoy. Local restaurants and shops will welcome all in attendance. There is no admission fee for spectators. You are welcome to bring your children and infants in strollers, bottled water and snacks in coolers. However, please no pets, glass containers, scooters, roller skates, bicycles or alcohol. There is a zero tolerance policy and all violators will be cited.
The Orange Plaza Car Show is a short walking distance from the Orange Transportation Center. Take the Metrolink or OCTA and you are there!
Driving to the show? Get off the 57 or 55 freeways at Chapman Avenue and head toward the center of Orange. You can’t miss us! Free parking available in public lots surrounding the Orange Plaza Car Show.
Stop by the Seven Gables office located at 225 Glassell.
Hope to see you there!
Registration Starts Feb 1st For The 24th Annual Orange Plaza Car show 0
Registration for the 24th Annual Orange Plaza Car Show scheduled for April 15, 2018 starts Thursday, February 1st at 8:00. Tickets sell out very quickly, usually within two to three days. Once all tickets are sold, no more are available, however there is a standby registration on the day of the event. There are 
no refunds.
The show is open to 1976 street rods, custom and classic vehicles. Tickets range from $45 to $5000. For more information go to www.orangeplazarotary.org.
Unlikely hero receives tribute to his Marine veteran father in Orange after family’s tragedy Comments Off on Unlikely hero receives tribute to his Marine veteran father in Orange after family’s tragedy
Her lungs burned.
Her face felt like she had stuck it in an oven. She was so smothered by smoke, she barely could see.
It was Dec. 9, a Saturday morning, just before 6. Flames roared through Elizabeth “Angel” Robinson’s old house on Shelbyville Highway on the outskirts of Petersburg, a Tennessee town of about 550. Metro Moore County Fire Chief Mark Neal later cried at the scene as he spoke to the media about Robinson’s husband, a survivalist and Marine veteran who had prepared his family for the end of the world.
Neal talked about a parent’s heroic instinct to keep going back inside.
“It’s a typical parent,” Neal said. “They want to do anything they can to save their children.”
The chief, however, didn’t have the whole story right. What happened in that house couldn’t be summed up in a fleeting television interview. Heroes don’t always fit neatly into narratives.
Three people were dead – a father, Nate Robinson, 33, and two of his children, Cailyn, 13, and Gillianna, 8. Among the dead was a pit bull named MJ who always slept beside the girls.
Two survivors had to be airlifted to Vanderbilt University Medical Center 70 miles away in Nashville. One was Angel Robinson, 36. And one was Angel and Nate’s 11-year-old son Mason, who had been diagnosed with autism after he didn’t speak for the first three years of his life.
Angel and Mason, both recovering from smoke inhalation, flew to Southern California this week for a memorial service honoring her daughters and husband, who was raised in a house on Cedar Street in Orange and attended Orange High School.
Angel clutched a folded American flag, given to her in Nate’s memory, as she recounted the morning she thought would be her last. She remembers seeing Cailyn staggering toward her, obviously dazed by the toxic smoke. When Cailyn fell, Angel tried to drag her toward the cleaner air. Cailyn’s limp body wouldn’t budge.
Suddenly, a burning beam from the ceiling crashed onto her daughter.
Angel crumpled to the floor in front of Cailyn, in the house on Chestnut Ridge, where she and Nate had moved almost six years ago to get away from it all, and she made her peace. If this was the end, she and her daughter would go together.
“I would have sat there and died with her,” she said.
That’s when Angel heard the voice that would save her. Somehow it was calm in the crackling chaos.
Marine dreams
“I fell in love with him the second that I saw him,” Angel said. “He was the person I was supposed to be with.”
In February of 2003, Nate Robinson, a Marine, was stationed in Huntsville, Alabama. Angel was a waitress at a dive bar – so unremarkable she couldn’t remember its name – in nearby Harvest. He was a good-looking teenager with a fake I.D. She was three years older, and she was flirting hard.
“It was not sinking in,” she said. Finally, she gave him her phone number, though he didn’t ask.
Nate had always wanted to be a Marine. He was in the Junior ROTC program at Orange High when the Sept. 11 attacks happened in 2001. The attacks only made him more determined.
“He was very gung-ho about it,” said high school friend Eric Young, who also became a Marine.
Nate wanted to be a sniper.
“That was his dream,” said Lori Robinson, his mother.
Angel wanted to be a makeup artist and had investigated taking classes at Chapman University, which happened to be just a few miles from the house where Nate was raised.
“We were never apart,” she said.
Nate proposed to Angel on vacation near the rocks above the beach at Corona Del Mar. He was 19, and she was pregnant. Cailyn was born in January 2004, six months after they were married.
Nate’s military career didn’t go as planned. He worked as an ammunition technician and didn’t get deployed. After his second year as a Marine, he developed “anxiety issues” and began using prescription drugs, according to his friend Young. Nate’s military career ended with an “other than honorable” discharge after a few drug-related incidents.
(The OTH discharge has been challenged, first by Nate, then by his wife after his death. His memorial service ceremonies – one in Tennessee and one in Santa Ana – were not officially sanctioned by the Veteran’s Administration, which usually takes more than a year to investigate such challenges. Angel and Nate’s family hope his discharge status is changed to honorable. Nate’s buddies volunteered to give him a military presence at his services.)
Nate and Angel had three children in the first five years they were married. Their son, Mason, was brilliant at math but he had difficulty communicating. He threw screaming tantrums. Nate and Angel decided not to give him the medication that is prescribed for many children with autism.
“He likes ‘Star Wars,’ Minecraft and Legos,” Angel said of Mason. “And he likes to keep to himself.”
Their children were home-schooled. Nate insisted that they pre-screen Disney movies to protect their children from inappropriate images.
Nate, who had always been good at drawing, became a tattoo artist. He made a tattoo gun out of an electric razor. A right-hander, Nate taught himself how to draw left-handed so he could tattoo both sides of his own body evenly. He inked a heart with flames across his chest. He also worked as a cook.
Angel and Nate moved around the South, then to Oregon and then to Petersburg, Tennessee, to help take care of Angel’s father, who was dying of cancer.
The little wood house on Shelbyville Highway was fine with the Robinsons.
“We were happy,” Angel said. “We didn’t have a lot of money. We didn’t have the nicest house.”
The kids could run and play on the rural Tennessee ridge.
“Our kids were not modern. They didn’t have material things,” Angel said. “Nate could be his own man.”
They had seven goats, two rabbits, three dogs, several cats and other animals. They grew their own vegetables. Nate liked to shoot his guns in the woods behind the house.
Angel said Nate was a survivalist. He had supplies and “go bags” packed just in case.
“He wanted to prepare his family in case the end of the world happened in our lifetime,” Angel said. “He was our protector.”
Horror and a hero
On the last night of his life, Nate massaged Angel’s leg like he had done several times since her recent hip surgery. They fell asleep in their bedroom, which was on the first floor of their two-story home. The children slept upstairs.
Just before 6 a.m., Angel jostled Nate from a sound sleep.
“There’s a fire,” she said. They could tell the fire was coming from the back of the house. The cause is still under investigation, but Chief Neal said the ignition is consistent with old and faulty wiring in a 100-year-old house.
Nate woke up and bolted out of the room. That’s the last she saw of her husband. He could have turned right and headed out of the house to save himself.
He turned left and went upstairs toward the girls’ room.
The smoke was so thick, Angel could barely see her phone when she dialed 911.
She hurried out the front door. Standing on the lawn, she could see Mason through the upstairs window. She grabbed a gardening tiller and tried to break the window so he could jump to her.
The tiller wasn’t long enough. She couldn’t break the window.
She was so happy to see Mason when he came out the front door. The 11-year-old went to the street and tried to wave down passing cars.
He said his dad had told him to get outside.
With her son safe, Angel went back inside the burning house.
The bodies of Nate and Gillianna were found near each other. It appears he died trying to save his child.
“He fought ’til the end,” Nate’s mother Lori said.
When Angel saw the beam fall on Cailyn, she sat down near her and prepared to die.
The voice that startled her back to life belonged to her son. In a lifetime of meltdowns, he was calm in the fire.
Mason told Angel he didn’t want to be the only one left.
Mason grabbed his mother’s hand and led her out of the house.
“If it wasn’t for Mason, I would be dead, too,” Angel said.
Nate’s brother, Zach, is a firefighter in Los Angeles.
“I’ve seen grown men freeze with fear in the face of fire,” he said. “Mason kept his wits about him.”
On Wednesday, some 2,000 miles away, at Calvary Chapel in Santa Ana, Nate Robinson’s Marine buddies folded an American flag to honor their fallen friend.
They presented it to Mason.
Angel plans to live with family in South Carolina. There is nothing left for her in Tennessee.
The brick chimney was the only part of the house that wasn’t destroyed by the blaze.
“The only keepsake I have is that boy,” Angel said.
All Access: Orange falls in State title game (video) Comments Off on All Access: Orange falls in State title game (video)
Go inside the locker room, and feel the emotion of the sidelines, as Orange rallied but ultimately succumbed to the Northern California squad.
Orange High School hosted their first ever CIF State championship football game, but did not get the result they intended, losing to Strathmore 31-29.
Video by Jonathan Khamis, for the Orange County Register.
23rd Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony in the Plaza December 3, 2017 0
The 23rd Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony and Candle Choir Procession is set this year for December 3, 2017 with Holiday Festivities starting at 3:30 pm. Don’t miss this highly anticipated holiday tradition in Old Town Orange. Join us for an evening of holiday cheer and family fun as we sing traditional carols of 
the season with the Orange Community Master Chorale led by musical director Michael Short. The Main Musical Program and Tree Lighting Ceremony begins at 5:15 pm.
Man shot in Orange in suspected gang-related incident Comments Off on Man shot in Orange in suspected gang-related incident
A 27-year-old Anaheim man was shot in Orange Sunday night, Oct.1, in what police suspect is a gang-related incident.
Police said they responded to reports of shots fired at 7:30 p.m. in the 1700 block of East Wilson Avenue and arrived to find evidence of a shooting but no victims. Thirty minutes later, though, the man showed up to a local hospital with gunshot wounds to his torso.
The man was in serious but stable condition, police said.
The shooting is under investigation.
With a packed audience, Anaheim Council weighing plan for a homeless state of emergency Comments Off on With a packed audience, Anaheim Council weighing plan for a homeless state of emergency
The Anaheim City Council late Tuesday was deciding whether to declare a state of emergency on the city’s growing homeless issue — especially along the tent encampments that line the Santa Ana River Trail.
As of 9:30 p.m., the seven-member council continued to consider the issue that attracted more than 100 people to its meeting including residents, homeless advocates, business owners, and city and Orange County leaders. More than 60 people addressed the council on the issue.
Council members were met with a huge media presence and a fiery standing-room crowd that overflowed to a nearby room. Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer attended the meeting and called for the city and county to team up and take action on the polarizing issue.
“This is something we are all struggling with,” said Spitzer, who touted the Orange County Board of Supervisors decision earlier in the day to enhance Orange County Sheriff department patrols of the Santa Ana River Trail and flood control channels in the county.
“We have to give everything we got to solve homelessness,” Spitzer said.
Orange County has 4,792 homeless people living in the county, according to 211OC.org’s Point in Time Count. More than 900 homeless people live in Anaheim – a number that has grown over the years – and nearly half have set up makeshift tents along a stretch near Honda Center and Angel Stadium from Ball Avenue to Chapman Avenue.
The title of Councilwoman Kris Murray’s “state of emergency” homeless resolution is a bit of an overstatement. The proposed action doesn’t release any kind of special or additional city funds. It raises a heightened sense of awareness and urgency on the matter, city staff said.
Under Murray’s proposal, the city would ramp up its efforts with the county, nonprofits and neighboring law enforcement agencies to clean up homeless areas, provide more mental and behavioral services, develop a shelter, and step up enforcement for the estimated 422 people living along the Santa Ana riverbed.
Murray also wants to expedite the building of 100 additional beds at the county’s homeless shelter Bridges at Kraemer Place in Anaheim, which opened in May. The shelter opened in May with 100 beds.
Additionally, Murray wants the city and the county to work together to build a 500-bed temporary, emergency shelter. The catch, she has said, is once the homeless move out of the riverbed, Anaheim could begin to enforce its anti-camping ordinance.
The council spent three hours listening to heated public comment. Residents and advocates had mixed feelings.
Eve Garrow of the American Civil Liberty Union said she could not support Murray’s proposal.
“I would encourage you to rethink this approach,” Garrow said. “Yes, we do need additional services. No one city can do this alone. But we are very opposed to policy solutions that criminalize people who sleep in public because they have nowhere else to go.”
Treva Wishank, an Anaheim resident, blamed the city for not enforcing its loitering laws.
“You are the cause of this problem,” she told the council. “Instead of one tent now you have 600 tents… I’m a taxpayer. I deserve some respect too. But because you did nothing with the lawlessness, now we have to declare a state of emergency.”
Longtime homeless advocate and resident Heidi Zimmerman said people have lost their compassion and humanity.
“You don’t care about people,” she said. “Shame on you while you sleep on a warm bed.”
Elissa Goodwin, who lives adjacent the riverbed, wanted the council to pass Murray’s plan.
“This plan has a balance of compassion and tough love,” Goodwin said. She had a message for the homeless advocates and ACLU: “Please stop enabling those that need help yet they refuse it… The homeless have to do their part.”
Kevin George, who organized a petition to clear the riverbed that has gathered 13,500 signatures, said Murray’s proposal is “a good step in the right direction.”
“Is it perfect? No. Nothing is perfect but it’s a move in the right direction. The majority of the neighbors feel that way. This is what Anaheim wants.”
March For Our Lives: Here are some creative signs we saw at the Southern California demonstrations Comments Off on March For Our Lives: Here are some creative signs we saw at the Southern California demonstrations
by Angela Ratzlaff • Orange, Real Estate News • Tags: Orange County News, School threat, The OC Register on March 24, 2018
March For Our Lives demonstrations took place in cities across the country on Saturday March 24.
In Southern California, demonstrations were planned in cities including downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Bernardino, Manhattan Beach, Pico Rivera, Orange and Santa Ana.
People of all ages participated and got crafty with the messages they wanted to get across.
From a 7-year-old girl named Hannah who held up a sign that read “Cats! No guns,” to a teacher who used a children’s book template from “Fun with Dick and Jane,” here are some creative signs that were on display across the region.